Ubuntu Linux won't load from external hard drive
 

I have a version of Ubuntu linux installed on an external hard drive so that i can run two separate operating systems on my laptop (Dell latitude d630). I was getting tired of always having to specify my hard drive and to load windows when i needed it for school, and the tech support at school didn't know how to change the GRUB sequence. So, they reimaged my hard drive in my laptop and know Windows opens just fine, but if i try to load ubuntu from the external hard drive it won't do anything it just loads windows. I put my ubuntu CD in the drive and ran the demo version. in the demo version i can see my external hard drive still has all the ubuntu files installed on it, but i can't see that part of the hard drive in windows. Please help me so that i can get back to my ubuntu linux. thank you

Hello,

when running the live-CD locate the mountpoint of your linuxpartition and do a chroot into this partition. Then you can install the bootloader so that it lets you choose between windows and linux when you start the laptop.

Markus

I'm a newbie
 

Sorry i don't mean to be a pain but i'm kinda new to linux and don't know how to do what you just said. "chroot" i'm thinking this means change root but i'm not really sure

In order to get a clearer picture of your setup, how about booting your Live CD (the Ubuntu install CD), download the Boot Info Script to your Ubuntu desktop, open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and do:
That will create a "RESULTS.txt" file in the same directory from where the script is run, namely your desktop; please copy/paste the contents of that file to your next post, highlight the copied text, and click the pound sign # graphic in the forum message box so that the text will get "code" tags put around it. The results of that script will help clarify your setup and hopefully what it will take to get your Ubuntu booting again.

Based on your original post...are you sure your laptop can boot from USB? If they reimaged your laptop, your Linux is gone, which is why you only have windows now. If your laptop won't boot from USB, nothing you do in the OS can make it.

My suggestion would be to re-install Linux to your internal hard drive, and just make Windows the default boot choice in Grub.

Fortunately that's not true. There are boot managers like "PLoP" that can boot a USB drive even if the BIOS does not support USB booting, because PLoP comes with its own built-in USB drivers.